The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett

When Sabine spoke the room froze. She possessed an intrinsic understanding of men. It was from a lifetime of being beautiful, even to children. “Your mother? I met your mother last night. Did you know that?” The sound of her voice soothed them, made them nearly sleepy. The boys dropped back in their chairs. “The middle of the night, I woke up and she was in the kitchen. She reminded me so much of your uncle. They look so much alike. You look like him when he was young,” she said, giving that prize to How. “I had never met your mother before, but she was so much like her brother that I felt like I knew her.” They did not hear her words as much as absorb them. Magic was less about surprise than it was about control. You lead them in one direction and then come up behind their backs. They watch you, at every turn they will be suspicious, but you give them decoys. People long to be amazed, even as they fight it. Once you amaze them, you own them. What was nearly a fistfight on top of the kitchen table was now completely forgotten. Like the flash floods in Twenty-Nine Palms, it surprised them both coming and going.